From the upper atmosphere to the bottom of the Mariana Trench

A little Sunday evening "wow".



Source: OurAmazingPlanet.com: Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench

Sunday Funnies (lots of 'em)

What'd I miss?

While I was gone?

-- The fallout from last week's tirade by soon-to-be-former Cippers' owner Donald Sterling continues.

• He's been treated for prostate cancer for some extended period of time.
• The head of the LA NAACP resigns over the furor.
• Even the Houston Clippers changed their name (to Cyclones).

-- Cliven Bundy's neighbors are worn out from his antics.

Travelers from around the country are calling, wondering if it's safe to pass on Interstate 15, where Bundy and his supporters, some armed with military-style weapons, faced down federal officials in an April 12 standoff over his cattle grazing on federal land.

Police Chief Troy Tanner tells callers it's safe. But local authorities and Bundy's neighbors are growing weary of the attention and the unresolved dispute. Since the standoff, Bundy went from being proclaimed a patriot by some for his resistance to a racist for comments he made about blacks being better off under slavery.

"Most of our neighbors have about the same opinions we have. They don't like it," said John Booth, a resident of nearby Bunkerville who drove this week with his wife, Peggie, past the State Route 170 encampments. "But they're not really going to say anything about it."

As triple-digit temperatures of a Mojave Desert summer approach, militia members vow to stay and protect Bundy and his family from government police, though it's unclear what the immediate threat is.

[...]

"We haven't been told by the Bundys that they're ready for us to go," said Jerry DeLemus, a former U.S. Marine from New Hampshire.

DeLemus heads a self-styled militia protection force of perhaps 30 people who sleep in tents, clean their military-style AR-15 and AK-47 weapons, and form work crews to help build watering bins for cattle on and around the Bundy ranch.

[...]

Bundy acknowledged creating a stir when he and his family showed up at the Mormon church with armed bodyguards for Easter Sunday services.

"The militia have been going with me everywhere," Bundy said Tuesday. "When I got to church, I said, 'Leave your weapons in the car.' They did. I guess there could have been weapons in the parking lot, but there were no weapons in the church house."

That sentiment officially puts Bundy to the left of Greg Abbott.  And Wendy Davis, for that matter.  But not Leticia Van de Putte or the Texas Democratic Party.

-- I say again to Democrats: RUN ON OBAMACARE.

Here’s another unexpected way the politics of Obamacare are going to get scrambled in the days ahead – and not necessarily in the GOP’s favor — as the reality of mounting sign-ups sinks in.

It turns out that several of the states with some of the hardest fought races of the cycle are also boasting some of the highest Obamacare sign-up numbers in the country.

[...]

In Florida, some 983,000 people are now signed up for private insurance through the federal exchange — up from 442,000 at the end of February. This is in a state where the Dem candidate for Governor — Charlie Crist — happens to be running on a very pro-Obamacare message. Crist is already seizing on the new data to attack GOP incumbent Governor Rick Scott for opposing the law — and over the consequences of repeal.

[...]

In North Carolina, some 357,000 people have now signed up for coverage through the federal exchange — up from 200,000 at the end of February. This could become more of an issue in the days ahead: Senator Kay Hagan has previously attacked likely GOP foe Thom Tillis for opposing setting up a state exchange and opposing the Medicaid expansion as state House speaker. Now the new numbers will provide fodder for Dems in the state to argue that North Carolinians wanted access to expanded health coverage — despite Tillis’ efforts to block it – underscoring the Dem message that Tillis’ state policies have been hostile to the middle class.

In Georgia, the sign-ups are now at around 316,000, and in Louisiana they’re at around 101,000.

In Texas the numbers are 734,000. Courtesy Philip Martin at Progress Texas...

• 55% are women
• 30% are age 18-34 -- slightly higher than the 28% national rate
• 439k signed up after March 1. 295k had signed up prior to March 1
• 84% used financial assistance

The target number from the White House was in the 650K range.  Medicaid enrollees also showed a small increase.  Expanding this program -- and accepting the billions of dollars of federal funding to do so -- would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, particularly in places like the Texas Medical Center in Houston.

Last year, Texas took $17 billion in federal money for its $28 billion Medicaid program. It currently covers 3.6 million children, pregnant women, seniors and disabled Texans.

More than 1 million poor adults of working age would be added to the program by 2016 if Texas changed course and embraced expansion, according to the state Health and Human Services Commission.

Texas would receive $9 billion to fund the program in the first year alone, spending a bit over $1 billion more than we do now.  The state budget  is projected to have a surplus approaching $11 billion by the beginning of the next legislative session (in January of 2015).  And yes, we need increased spending on infrastructure (particularly water, with continuing drought concerns), and education -- not tax cuts, goddammit.

Democrats will press this political advantage over the next six months -- if they want to win, that is.  Update: Kuff with a whole lot more.

-- The ineptitude of the Houston Astros reaches a new low.  Update: A serious question is asked as to whether their fan base is vanishing.  I say yes -- since I consider myself part of the erosion.  Now that the Rockets have been eliminated from the playoffs, I suspect all eyes and ears locally will turn to the NFL draft.

-- May Day was celebrated around the world, but in the United States, they always try to drown it out with something else.  Yesterday it was the obnoxious National Day of Prayer, and locally they co-opted it for disaster preparation.  That didn't work out so well in downtown Houston.

This nation -- hell, this planet, since wage slavery has been outsourced around the globe -- is in dire need of a significant workers' uprising.  Maybe the US can catch up a little next year.

Update: Well lookie here.  A Seattle confrontation all but unmentioned by US media.  Thanks to Brian H for this.

2014 vs. 2010, and other stuff

-- It's not as if this topic hasn't been blogged about previously, but there's two pieces out today -- one that talks about how bad it might be, one that talks about how good it might be.  The polling is all over the place, so there's that to confuse everyone also.

-- Rick Perry wins again, and California loses.  Wingnuts rejoice.  The actual relo is a good thing for Toyota, and by extension Texas and Texans.  So let's celebrate the news (but not give all the credit to one fellow, please).  Will Elon Musk -- who announced last week that SpaceX is moving forward in south Texas -- follow suit, or continue to hold his battery factory as a bargaining chip for the direct selling of Teslas here, bypassing the lobby-strong auto dealers?

-- On the other hand, this is what happens when life meets religious conservative dogma.

That's all I have time for today; my uncle Troy -- my Dad's older brother -- passed over the weekend, so there's time and attention offline that command a higher priority.

Racism is a generational attribute, not a partisan one *updates*

Terrific piece here from Joe Concha at Mediaite.

So here’s a question to consider regarding the (LA Clippers' owner) Donald Sterling media storm that hit over the weekend: where was all this outrage when Senator Harry Reid talked about then-Senator Obama only using a “Negro dialect” when he wanted to?

That question doesn’t come from me, but from ESPN’s Robert Smith, a former All-Pro running back for the Minnesota Vikings. (It is worth noting that Smith is biracial, like Obama; African American and Caucasian.)

Mr. Reid — the Senate Majority Leader — made those comments back in 2008, during the presidential campaign as reported in the best-seller Game Change. According to authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann:

“He [Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one…’”

Reid later apologized for the remark after the book came out two years later. He was not asked to resign, nor was there anything remotely resembling the kind of backlash Sterling is feeling — and absolutely rightly so — for his recorded comments scolding his half-Latina girlfriend for bringing blacks to Clippers’ games and/or posting Instagram photos with them.

But as Smith notes, where exactly was the outrage for Reid? 

I had forgotten this happened, but I clearly recall the scorn Joe Biden received for referring to Obama as 'articulate' during 2008's Democratic presidential scrum.   What's being put to bed here is the canard that "not all Republicans are racists, but all racists are Republicans".

Sorry. No.

Or remember when Mitt Romney said this? “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

Whoops. That wasn’t Romney, but then-Senator Joe Biden back in 2006. Could you imagine the media reaction if those words did come from a Romney, a Ryan, a Rand or a Cruz?

Rhetorical question.

And then there’s the time the North Carolina county precinct GOP chair (Don Yelton) actually said this of voter ID opposition in a Daily Show interview, of all places: The law “hurts a bunch of lazy blacks who just want the government to give them everything, so be it.”

Racism exists in this country, of course. But it seems to be more of a generational issue than something that pertains to one party.  

This is some brutal truth about to pour itself on our heads, y'all.

Think of what Sterling, Cliven Bundy, Reid, Yelton and Biden all have in common: All are over the age of 60; all are white; all grew up in a “different time,” when racism was much more accepted. So it’s fascinating to listen to Reid this week publicly call on Republicans to disavow Bundy, whom he correctly calls a “hateful racist.” As we’ve seen, the 27-year Senator never misses an opportunity to score political points with the base, even when the hypocrisy is obvious.

Sterling, who has only donated to Democrats in the past (albeit not for awhile), was actually up for his second Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP. 

That would be the LA chapter of the NAACP, which wanted to praise the Clippers owner for the significantly larger donations than he gave to two Democrats, Gray Davis and Bill Bradley, in the early '90's ... his only political contributions for which there is public record.  Thus is revealed the carefully orchestrated hypocrisy of Sterling, who brings his biracial black/Latina girlfriend to "his" games -- while his not-quite-ex-wife still helps him manage the Clippers -- but she (girlfriend) is not allowed to post a picture of herself with Magic Johnson to Instagram.

Let's check in briefly at this time with the Field Negro.

The thing is, though; no one should be surprised. This is not an unusual way of thinking for men in the majority population of a certain age here in America. [...] The fact that Sterling held these views has been the worst kept secret in the sports world, and yet he was allowed to continue owning the Clippers and reach into his deep pockets to purchase high-priced free agents and an equally high profile African American coach. (Please don't tell me that Doc Rivers didn't know about Sterling. He -- like the LA chapter of the NAACP -- should be ashamed of himself.)

As John Oliver -- the former Daily Show reporter/comedian whose new HBO program debuted over the weekend -- observed, it was a "rough week for unrepentant racists and recording devices".  Back to Concha.

Is racism getting worse in this country? Hard to know the answer to that. On one hand, Cliven Bundy’s and Donald Sterling’s deplorable comments have been universally condemned from left and right, blacks and whites alike. On the other hand, it feels like the divide is getting deeper — especially since the media-fueled polarization of the George Zimmerman trial and verdict.

Maybe it’s just that too many people on the extremes have been given a microphone. Shock value is more and more embraced in media, particularly the world of cable news. And nothing is easier for a segment producer to put together than a racial “debate” between the usual suspects we see every time there a story involving black vs. white that day, that week, that month.

Robert Smith wants to know where the outrage was with Harry Reid when he spoke of Negro dialects. It’s a valid question from someone with no skin (pun intended) in the game. But let’s stop trying to keep a scorecard on what member of which party is making a stupid racial remark this week.

As we’ve seen with the decisive dismissal of Cliven Bundy and the soon-to-be-dismissal of Donald Sterling, most Americans and almost all forms of media won’t stand for racism. And if you weren’t born somewhere before 1965, there’s a pretty good chance your thought process doesn’t exactly match theirs.

Nobody — except for blind partisans and ratings-hungry producers more interested in winning or showcasing an unwinnable and pointless argument — really cares about the voting preference of the offender. 

That's the best course of action here.  And that's coming from someone who was born before 1965, and has been guilty on occasion of squeezing lighter fluid on the partisan grill with regard to race.

Call out the racists, and also acknowledge that the blue or red label is immaterial.  That way we can all start to make a little progress together.

Update: FWIW, Michael Tomasky disagrees, as does Wonkette, with its usual graceful snark.  Tomasky has a good point about the incessant false equivalency that conservatives reach for in almost every political case, but w/r/t racism and racists, there's simply no political degree of difference that's worth contending.  As a nation, we can't begin to get past this until we recognize that we have all fallen short of the glory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Update II: Sources have debunked the 'Sterling is a Democrat' meme by posting pictures of his California voter registration, which shows him registered as a Republican.  I'm going to hold the line on the premise first advanced in the headline, primarily because in our American oligarchy, the wealthiest generally don't take sides (despite Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, yaddayadda).  They $upport their $elf-intere$t$ quite con$i$tently.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance strongly favors net neutrality as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes another redistricting lawsuit, this one filed by people who think our Senate districts aren't white enough.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos discovers Rick Perry and Greg Abbott were for eminent domain before they were against it. They both want to play Cliven Bundy in Texas.

Horwitz at Texpatriate reports that a majority of Houston city council members support a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston reports on Greg Abbott's call for the drug testing of 4-year-olds.

Greg Abbott tried to ride Cliven Bundy's coattails in a land dispute with the feds at the Red River, but -- as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs observes -- after Bundy "told us what he knew about the Negro", the attorney general was forced to jump off. (Are those figures of speech insensitive to a man in a wheelchair?)

Neil at All People Have Value said most folks correctly realize that the poor are just trying to get by and do well in a tough world. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

DosCentavos tells us that more cities are thumbing their nose at the immigration policy known as Secure Communities, and that El Prez/ICE is just about done with their deportation review -- but it may not be what activists want to hear. Plus: DC has a new font for the logo!

Texas Leftist has a new website! Introducing the NEW texasleftist.com.

=================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Socratic Gadfly is a little ticked that he isn't progressive enough to be included in the TPA weekly roundup.  Dude: you're worthy, you're worthy.

The Rivard Report documents the history of pay discrimination and legislation to outlaw it.

The Lunch Tray reports on new research concerning the effect of using food as a reward in classrooms.

The Bloggess writes about a threat letter her daughter's school received, and the importance of talking about such things with our kids.

Juanita Jean takes the Austin American-Statesman to task for a misleading headline about the grand jury that is currently investigating Rick Perry.

The Texas Green Report considers whether Tesla will build its battery plant in Texas.

Ride On Metro celebrated Lights Out Houston.

Finally, the TPA congratulates Randy Bear for being named the City Skeptic of San Antonio.

Sunday Funnies

If only we had elected this guy president

Asked whether he thought the Federal Communications Commission and Congress needed to preserve the Internet as we know it, the senator from Illinois said, “The answer is ‘yes.’ I am a strong supporter of Net neutrality.”

“What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites,” explained Obama, who warned that with such a change in standards “you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites.”

Obama’s bottom line: “That I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”

Or maybe even this guy, four years ago.

So was President Obama when, in 2010, the White House declared that, “President Obama is strongly committed to net neutrality in order to keep an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, consumer choice, and free speech.”

Or even this guy, four months ago.

And President Obama certainly sounded right in January, 2014, when he said, “I have been a strong supporter of net neutrality. The new commissioner of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, whom I appointed, I know is a strong supporter of Net Neutrality.”

But it seems we got tricked; we elected, and re-elected, an Obama who appointed this guy.

If reports in the Wall Street Journal are correct, Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, has proposed a new rule that is an explicit and blatant violation of this promise. In fact, it permits and encourages exactly what Obama warned against: broadband carriers acting as gatekeepers and charging Web sites a payola payment to reach customers through a “fast lane.”

Late last night Wheeler released a statement accusing the Wall Street Journal of being “flat-out wrong.” Yet the Washington Post has confirmed, based on inside sources, that the new rule gives broadband providers “the ability to enter into individual negotiations with content providers … in a commercially reasonable matter.” That’s telecom-speak for payola payments, and a clear violation of Obama’s promise.

This is what one might call a net-discrimination rule, and, if enacted, it will profoundly change the Internet as a platform for free speech and small-scale innovation. It threatens to make the Internet just like everything else in American society: unequal in a way that deeply threatens our long-term prosperity. 

There doesn't appear to be any ambiguity in the reaction to the proposal, that's for sure.  It may in fact be even worse than it initially appears.  Worst of all, those of us who support net neutrality may have to start sucking up to a few of the largest tech companies in order to save it.

No matter what may develop, there is only a short time left to save net neutrality as we know it.  That means a lot of loud complaining about this new rule to Wheeler and the FCC, just to see if public opinion can still make a difference.

It's the same federally as it is locally: as a concerned citizen you must take action.  I dislike having to repeat myself over and over again to my elected (and appointed) officials just as much as you do, but they don't seem to listen.  So make sure they hear you.

Friday Bundy Roundup

-- Who said it: Al, Ted, Cliven, or McGeorge?  I was just 4 out of 10.  I'm ashamed.

-- #ClivenBundyMovies: "Whiners of the Purple Sage", "Throw Mama in Front of the Feds", "A Day at the Racist", "Hiding Behind Miss Daisy", "Negro Like Me", "High Plains Grifter", "Twelve Years a Slave Isn't Long Enough", etc., etc.

When God closes a Fred Phelps, he opens a Cliven Bundy.
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) April 24, 2014

-- An oldie but a goodie.

-- Some of the latest.

-- And as a reminder that the past isn't just prologue, it's not even the past...

And starring Greg Abbott as Cliven Bundy

Never one to skip a Tea Party poutrage -- and not content with only showing off his pathetic understanding of the law -- Greg Abbott has waded into (is that insensitive?) the Nevada-federal-grazing-land controversy by trying to recreate one at the Red River.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), the GOP candidate for governor, released a letter politely notifying the Bureau of Land Management that he is "deeply concerned" about reports that the BLM plans to "swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations."

At issue is some amount of acreage — Abbott says 90,000 acres, BLM says 140 — along the Texas side of the border with Oklahoma, delineated by the Red River. The BLM is currently updating its resource management plan for Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, deciding what will be done with the public lands under its management (it could sell the land, open or close it to public use, or let ranchers graze cattle on it, for example). As part of that process, BLM is looking to clarify who owns certain areas of property along the Red River.

You would think that the Texas-Oklahoma border is pretty well fixed by now, but determining the right line has consumed decades of court battles — all the way to the Supreme Court — and involves concepts like avulsion and accretion (when a river cuts away or adds land as it naturally changes course). Both the BLM and Abbott's office say they have the law and court precedent on their side.

Avulsion and accretion, General Abbott.  As opposed to revulsion and excretion, the typical reaction to your ridiculous pronouncements.

Attorney General Abbott in his letter asked the BLM for clarification of its intentions, asserting that "respect for property rights and the rule of law are fundamental principles in the State of Texas and the United States."

But candidate Abbott took a more populist tack, telling Breitbart Texas that he is "about ready...to go to go to the Red River and raise a 'Come and Take It' flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas."

With Ted Nugent, a herd of rednecks with guns, and a few camera phones provided courtesy of those intrepid journalists at Breitbart Texas, who were still picking up the broken pieces of their medium the last time we checked in.  Oh well, at least there'll be a pickup truck with a winch on the front to pull his wheelchair out of the rojo-colored mud when he sinks into it hoisting that petard.

Finally, after the mockery, the moneyshot.

...(M)ore to the point, to paraphrase Shakespeare, he's protesting way too much, perhaps in a bid to obscure the fact that the state of Texas — while Abbott served as its top lawyer — has its own spotty record with protecting private property rights.

You don't have to look too far back, either. Last Thursday, Texas seized the 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado from a branch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon offshoot sect. The group's leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving a life sentence for "celestially marrying" two underage women, and Texas troopers helped vacate the remaining members last week.

Former FLDS member Flora Jessop tells Reuters that Texas deserves the land for having the courage to prosecute Yearning for Zion leaders. But the state claimed its right under a Jan. 6 forfeiture judgment from a state court. "Efforts to seize the property," Reuters' Jim Forsyth notes, "were initiated in 2012 by the attorney general's office."

Then there's the issue of private companies — specifically oil pipeline interests, but also power companies and for-profit toll highway operators — using eminent domain to seize private property, with the state's blessing. In March, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear a final appeal from northeast Texas landowner Julia Trigg Crawford, who refused to sell her land to TransCanada, which used eminent domain to put a leg of the Keystone XL pipeline through her land.

When you've lost both ends of the political spectrum represented by Julia Trigg Crawford and Warren Jeffs... it's entirely possible that you might just lose the governor's race.  That's conditional upon the Texas Teabaggers being able to see the light through Abbott's Shroud of Hypocrisy, which might be a standardized test too far.

McBlogger says it shorter.

Update: Now that the new conservo-hero has shared his thoughts on race relations, his fans seem to be vanishing.

“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton,” Bundy was quoted as saying to a group of supporters last Saturday. “And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

[...]

Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas.

But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

As my friend Neil likes to say, everything is connected.  That goes double for stupid, mean, racist, and Republicans.

Update II: But Bundy does have a positive opinion of undocumented immigrants.

"Now let me talk about the Spanish people," Bundy said in a new video unearthed by New York magazine, right after he concluded his thoughts on "the Negro."

"I understand that they come over here against our Constitution and cross our borders," he says. "But they're here and they're people. I worked side-by-side a lot of them. Don't tell me they don't work, and don't tell me they don't pay taxes. And don't tell me they don't have better family structures than most of us white people."

"When you see those Mexican families, they're together. They picnic together. They're spending their time together," he said. "I'll tell you, in my way of thinking, they're awful nice people. We need to have those people join us and be with us."

What a terrible quandary the conservatives are faced with now.

Uber awful

The minute I laid eyes on 'em, I knew they were no good.

At least one ride-sharing company has decided to openly defy city law that bans its unlicensed drivers from charging for rides.

While a few free-ride promotions remain ongoing, Uber spokeswoman Nairi Hourdajian confirmed Tuesday that the service, which connects interested riders with willing drivers via smartphone apps, is indeed charging for rides and will “stand by” any drivers who receive city citations.

Where are all the conservatives crying "illegal"?  We certainly aren't going to find them in a federal courtroom, sitting higher than everybody else.

A federal judge Monday declined to issue a temporary restraining order sought by Houston and San Antonio cab companies hoping to block ride-sharing services that permit riders to use smart phone applications to catch rides.

Houston-based U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore set a July 15 date for an injunction hearing, which could result in stopping the smartphone-based companies from operating or give city ordinances as chance to catch up with the technology.

Gilmore said she had some "real concern" about whether the taxi and limousine companies had standing for a temporary restraining order, and added that she was particularly concerned about doing anything that stands in the way of a political process that already is under way.

Isn't that wonderful.  Let's break the law AND have the judge blow it off.

This is the same company that is busily lining up behind Google and Facebook with their own grandiose schemes to take over the world.

Honestly, I think what finished it for me was when I saw one of the local diehard Democratic activists -- he has both pimped Uber relentlessly and also drove the presidential limo when Obama came to town earlier this month -- compliment Robert Miller, Republican fundraiser and Uber lobbyist, on his sartorial splendor at City Hall.  If you needed a better example of class warfare, waged on the poor from the Democrats and the Republicans working in harmony, I do not know where you might find it.  Oh wait.

Oligarchy, it's what's for dinner.  I just don't think trust fund millennials are ever going to get it, even if they read this.

There is nothing progressive about lowering earnings for working-class people, nor is there anything progressive about undercutting labor costs to the point workers are driven into poverty and homelessness. It's a game as old as the laborers in the days of the Bible and as recent as those sweating in the mines of Western and Southern Africa. Play the working class against one another for the benefit of the wealthy who seek to be served no matter the human cost.

Texas Monthly weighed in also with the public policy perspective.

Regulating services like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar is important. Companies that profit off of public infrastructure (i.e., roads) need to pay taxes that help maintain that infrastructure, but that's just the beginning of the question. Are the unlicensed, part-time, "your driver is your buddy" chaffeurs of Lyft and Sidecar safe behind the wheel, if there's no regulation? Cities have a legitimate interest in regulating taxi franchises for multiple reasons: safety, tax purposes, and ensuring that there are enough cabs on the road—i.e., that the business model remains profitable enough that people continue becoming cab drivers—to provide travelers with the ability to, say, get to and from the airport in a reasonable manner. 

All the cab companies have ever said is that Uber and the rest of these operations should abide by the same city laws that they have for decades.  Uber cannot seem to do that.

I wouldn't hire this outfit to clean out my garage.  And to be clear, everybody that does hire them is fighting the class war on the side of the wealthiest against everybody else.

Texpate has some additional thoughts on the libertarian lousiness that is Uber, and Kuffner has been all over it (mostly from the opposite perspective).  With the first draft of the ride-sharing ordinance made public, the heated discussions will now begin.  As with Houston's proposed non-discrimination ordinance, it's time to make your city council member hear your voice.

How Earth Day became a global event

Earth Day began in 1970, when 20 million people across the United States—that's one in ten—rallied for increased protection of the environment.

"It was really an eye-opening experience for me," Gina McCarthy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who was a self-described self-centered teenager during the first Earth Day rallies, told National Geographic. (See pictures: "The First Earth Day—Bell-Bottoms and Gas Masks.")

"Not only were people trying to influence decisions on the Vietnam War," she recalled, "but they were beginning to really focus attention on issues like air pollution, the contamination they were seeing in the land, and the need for federal action."

At the time, she said, the environment was in visible ruins: factories legally spewed black clouds of pollutants into the air and dumped toxic waste into streams.

"I can remember the picture of the Cuyahoga River being on fire," she said, referring to the Ohio waterway choked with debris, oil, sludge, industrial wastes, and sewage that spectacularly erupted in flames on June 22, 1969, and caught the nation's attention.

Although members of the public were increasingly incensed at the lack of legal and regulatory mechanisms to thwart environmental pollution, green issues were absent from the U.S. political agenda.

Not so any longer, naturally. Today's example would be Karl Rove sharing his thoughts on the decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline.  It seems also that the Green Party -- at least in the United States -- missed an opportunity to brand itself as the environmental political movement, and has even allowed the word 'green' to be co-opted by non-political groups like the Sierra Club and others.

In the years since the first Earth Day we've seen a corruption of the terminology by people who have apparently decided that a healthy environment is somehow bad for business.  "Tree-huggers", "whackos", "enviro-Nazis", "dirty effing hippies", etc. all characterize the rhetoric of those who think fracking is safe, that the bees and polar bears aren't in trouble, and that the vanishing glaciers in Glacier National Park is just a phase.

The words of Upton Sinclair have never rung more true (and have never been more applicable than in Texas, where Rick Perry often gets the economic credit for the millions of dinosaurs who died in the Permian Basin hundreds of thousands of years ago)...

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

There are no jobs on a dead planet. I wonder if conservatives, when they express concern for their grandchildren's future in the form of debt and deficits, ever consider that.